Wreck of USS YMS-385

 Second World War 1939-1945, military, shipwreck, United States Navy, minehunter / minesweeper (ship)

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Laid down in June 1942 as the 385th member of the YMS-1 Class of Auxiliary Motor Minesweepers at the Colberg Boat Works of Stockton, CA, USS YMS-385 commissioned into service with the US Pacific Fleet in April 1943.

Primarily engaged with convoy escort work and type training for much of her first year of duty, the Minesweeper and her crew deployed to Pearl Harbor in mid-1944 as an escort for a Westward-bound convoy and after further training around the Hawaiian Islands received orders to join Mine Squadron 1. Making their way to the recently-captured Ulithi Atoll as an escort for a large convoy comprised mainly of repair and stores ships, YMS-385 and her crew entered the large lagoon and received their first combat minesweeping orders from her new Squadron on the night of September 30th.

Moving to the waters of the Zowariau Channel at 0500hrs the following morning, YMS-385's crew laid out their sweeping gear and moved seaward through the channel, cutting several Japanese mines loose in the process. Aware that the channel they were operating was clearly heavily mined, YMS-385's crew maintained a sharp lookout for mines lying in her path but failed to sight one that brushed along her hull with enough force to snap off a trigger horn and detonate almost directly beneath the Minesweepers engine room. Obscured from the view of her fellow Minesweepers by a pillar of water, YMS-385's wooden hull was split in half by the force of the mine detonation and by the time several other vessels arrived to lend assistance YMS-385 had sank in two sections, taking three of her crew with her to the bottom of the channel and leaving nearly the entire balance of her crew injured. A further seven of her crew would later succumb to the injuries they suffered in the loss of YMS-385 on October 1st, 1944.

www.navsource.org/archives/11/19385.htm